one picture

I have really enjoyed this challenge. I thought writing this was too silly, but you never know until you attempt it. Have I grown with this challenge? Well, there are certain things that I have realised due to this challenege that I do have some regular readers :) (yay!) and I am more fortunate than I thought I was, more happy than I realised it, more in love with me than I imagined. So discovering this has only made me fall in love with me once again :)

SO I thought hard which pic of mine should I post. SOi decided to paint me using MS paint,It aint that great. My roomie made this finger painting for me- woman through whom the creativity blossoms. I thought I would do something like that but something else got made :)... SO i would like you to see the picture and tell me what it tells of me :)

2 songs

Dance with me tonight from music and lyrics.. that one is for guruji...

Baanwara man dekhne chala from hazaro khwahishe aisen:

3 movies

I LOVE watching movies and choosing 3 is very difficult.

3) 10 things I hate about you: Love Heathledger, an amazing actor, extremely cute and Julia stiles character reminded me lot of my roommate :) I am never tired of watching that movie again and again

2) Manichitrathazu- Mohanlal and Shobhana at their very best! Bestest movie in malayalam ever. Its after watching this movie that I decided to take up psychology :)My favorite scene is when Shobhana lifts the bed in anger when Suresh Gopi refuses to let her go shopping. MIndblowing scene!!!!!

1) Devdas by Sanjay leela Bhansali- I love it for the setting, dance, clothes,dialogues,music and MADHURI!!!! earlier during holidays I would goon youtube and keep watching 'kahe ched'. I have lost the count of how many times I have watched that song :)

4 books

I do love reading but off late I have hardly been reading.

4) Anna Karenina: I LOVE this book by leo tolstoy. I had to reda it for the russian literature course that I did in my 1st yr in MA. The way the character of Anna is created, portrayed and written its brilliant. I could at some level understand her misery. Love Anna, LOve Tolstoy for creating her:)

3) To kill a mocking bird by Harper Lee: racism through eyes of a child portrayed with such sensitivity and simplicity. You HAVE to read this book. brilliantly written :)


2) Harry Potter series : I LOVE them a) they are well written, excellent choice of words. Iam not quite into fantasy literature but you have to give it to JKR for creating a new world. I grew up reading this book. I remember telling the story of Harry Potter to my bro with so much of drama that he started reading it as well . To my dismay, it meant competition once new books were released. Both of us fought to decide who will read it first. I saved up my scholarship money to buy the books, i refused birthday dress for harry potter, I WOKE UP and was at the book store at 7.30 am even before it could open to buy my new harry potter book ( 5th one) and yes,I own all the HP series :) interestingly the spiritual meaning behind the book is very deep, JKR s idea of Time and Death and very close to what Sri Sri says so I like it even more :)

1) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte : My all time favorite love story- its a doomed love story of Heathcliff and Catherine. We had to study it in my 2nd year of degree and the character of Heathcliff is extremely complex, villainous and a great lover at the same time. beautifully written, compact precise and my favorite dialogue from the bookis what Catherine says about Heathcliff " Whatever our souls are made of, His and mine are the same ". and I cannot forget the way my lecturer taught that novel to us, more importantly I learnt to analyse a novel and write about it after rewriting the answer crazy number of times for my lecturer. So in a way the novel helped me grow as well:)

Choosing the books was very very hard. So i have to mention few other favorites as well. These are favorites because they have touched me/ affected me so profoundly/changed me/ made me believe in things/ made me smile/ been there for me when needed :)

Alchemist by paulo Coelho

Curious incident of the Dog in the night time

Malory Towers series by Enid Blyton

Love in Times of Cholera by Gabriel Marques ( love story of 2 old people :) MUST READ!)

Stumbling into infinity my Michael Fisherman

Autobiography of a Yogi

Diary of Anne Frank

5 food

5) dark fantasy biscuits: I know probably I will be the one one, who will put biscuits under food and not snacks. That is how much I love cookies. and this one is my recent fascination. others are oatmeal biscuits, chocochip, 5 grain biscuits ( i forget the name), hide and seek etc etc

4) russian salad/ bread: I ate it first in my hostel mess :) and yes it was made really well.. generally love salads..bread butter jam.. bread- nutella, bread- cheese, bread- orange marmalade

3) pasta: I LOVE pasta.. my favorite food of all times. I ate it first when Dam cooked it, and then Sneha cooked. man! I love the pasta that Sneha cooks- cheese based, white cream pasta :) recently one that i had was in ashram prepared by Varun for Guruji :) It was MINDBLOWING!!! I had lunch already but had to eat this one:)

2) rasmalai: and yes, I believe sweets are food too ;) In fact at times I have them before the meal coz I dont really want to wait till I finished eating the whole meal to taste the dessert. I love bengali sweets, sandesh, rasgulla, champakali, kala jamun but favorite of all is rasmalai:)

1) ganji uta/ curd rice: I wouldn't have mentioned this if I hadn't been to Kamalashile. ganji Uta is basically boiled rice in water. It is simple man's food. But the way it is made in Kamalashile, ganji, vegetable and chutney ..slurp:)

curd rice cooked by my mum, with pickle and chutney and maybe some vegetable :)

The reason why I love the two is I do not have to bother mixing the curry and rice and buttermilk etc :) its all ready made :) they are lazy man's food ;)

there are many many food and yes, we vegetarians have lot of choices than you actually think. patrode ( konkani dish) all hyderabadi chutnies, DOSAAAA, roti, and ofcourse..

You might have noticed I have not mentioned mallu dishes, its strange coz I never was really fond of them except for chips, and avalos ladoos :)

Six Places

6) Manali :) a very beautiful hill station up north. I went there with my classmates in 2nd year ofmy college. I loved the bus ride to manali, the snow capped mountains surrounding our hotel, shopping there and the trip to rotang pass. I would LOVE to go there again :)

5) My native place in thaliparambu. Our ancestral house which is now in ruins but I love going there ( I have been there like twice or thrice) The farms surrounding it, ancient house.. there is something in that air, the feeling that generations of your ancestors have been there before you telling you of the lost glory :)

4) Italy .. I would love to visit that place some day, travel around in the gondolas:)

3) Goa and Hyderabad :) Hyderabad coz that city has given me some amazing frens and has made me what I am today :) I should specify, EFL campus in Hyderabad, the sagar coffee shop, film clubs, golkonda fort, hussain sagar lake ( Its my favorite spot ), maula Ali ...

and Goa.. I Love the beaches in Goa, the food, the dancing .. a good place for a holiday:)

2) Ashraaaaaaaaaaaam:) 21st Km Kanakpura , Bangalore...If you haven't been there , please do go there.If there is heaven on earth , IT IS HERE! No more description, go visit!

1) Mangalore:) I didn't realize how much I love this city until I had to leave this city for 2 whole years. I couldn't imagine being in a place that had no beach or heavy rainfalls. I missed it all :)

This was good. there is one more place I would want to visit Chicago:) and eat the food cooked by this NRI fren.( who for some reason has turned into an amazing cook and I need to verify the claims :)

seven wants!

7) TRAVEL!!! i wanna see the world.. go to Ireland, Greece, Rome, Africa, Taiwan.everywhere..

6) I want to get published

5) I would LOVE to paint my room, decide the colours,..may be have a story sketched on the walls..

4) SALSA and contemporary.. I would so wanna learn these dances. and better the belly dancing :) Contemporary coz its new and the chances to express yourself is lot more.. I and love the lifts.. and salsa coz I love the idea of dancing with someone, being in sync with the other person. U learn about knowing the moves without talking and belly dancing is sexy and meditative :)

3) I would want to learn cooking someday ( yeah.. that want is there. I imagine that magically I ll turn into this amazing cook who can make yummy cookies and bake cakes.. Right now, I am not ready to devote time for it.

2) THEATRE!!! I would love to act in a play! A musical perhaps that involves dancing and acting both..maybe direct one too.

1) I would want to go rock climbing, bungee jumping, river rafting, scuba dving.. I would wanna do all that before I die..

This was fun :) I haven't mentioned enlightenment coz I believe Guruji is already taking care of it. Its his job now :) and I am surprised I haven't mentioned marriage in this list!. ( may be I am not as desperate as I thought I was)

Eight Fears

8) Fear of being forgotten by people..

7) fear that my writing aint great..

6) fear that I am not doing justice to my life

5) Used to fear water..it has reduced a great deal though

4) used to fear dogs, that is taken care as well.

3) .. 2).. 1)...

Now I will just have to make up stuff..used to fear death, losing people etc etc.. But I guess with meditation,they slowly begin to slip away.

I did not like writing this one :(

9 loves

9) I love watching romantic comedies, not tear jerks but feel good, awww types

8) well cooked vegetarian food, i love looking at it, smelling it :)

7) I love to stare blankly at the sky, watch the birds fly and watch the trees dance in the wind. Its really nice to watch the coconut trees especially when there is heavy winds,they simply dance like there is no tomorrow.

6) I love window shopping, in fact i love window shopping better than the actual shopping :)

5) I LOVE walking barefoot on grass..i love to feel the grass under my feet or even lying down on the grass and watching the stars.

4) I love the smell of coffee!!! thats why I love coffee day, the smell and the chairs :)

3) strolling in the beach,playing in the beach, sitting and watching beach, running around the beach..basically beach :) :) :)

2) my cellphone and my laptop.. I love them both:)

1) I love the smell of the first rain, i love rains..rains make me really happy and I LOVE dancing in the rain :) :) :)

I thought this would be difficult, but it wasn't. In fact there are many more things that I like..I love dance, colours, I love the feel of silk on the skin, I love to get a new look once in a while, but i dont do anything drastically different ( i do dream of it though), I would love to be published someday, paint, i love to walk, I love living basically..every second. No matter how much i crib, I LOVE living my life.. most of all, i couldn't put it anywhere in the list coz its beyond them all. I LOVE the fact that I am so lucky to have a living master!! SO Goddam lucky !!!

10 secrets

Okies! so this is the challenge that I happened to come across in one blog so I thought, "Why not?"

10 secrets

10. Used to fear writing earlier.. BIG time. Although I had lot of ideas I never wrote.

9. I get butterflies in my stomach just before I am about to go to stage especially if it is dance. No matter how many stage shows , I have done, I still get butterflies.

8. I love to day dream, in fact most of the time I am spaced and I love it :)

7. Is an cell phone addict. Keep checking my phone formessages and I am very happy when I receive one. ( even if it is a forward)

6. I am extremely bad at keeping in touch with people.

5. I can be physically violent at times.. I hit people for fun but it hurts them . ( its totally true!)

4. I find it tough to be assertive.. still working on my assertive skills :) although I think guruji is looking into that :)

3. I do NOT like dark chocolate or mint chocolates.I love the rest.

2. I cant reverse a car to save my life!really bad although I do have a driving license .

1. I do not understand subtle expressions of feelings.I prefer the direct way. no nonsense. and as much as i love watching mush movies and melodrama, in real life I do not prefer drama.

ah! I am done. Was difficult at first, but them flow was better later. Guess I amgoing to enjoy the challenge after all :)